MANILA, Philippines – Globe Telecom raked in P18.4 billion in 2018, 22% higher compared to 2017 due to higher mobile data use and more households installing broadband services.

Income drawn from mobile services jumped to P106.9 billion, 8.5% higher than 2017’s P98.5 billion.

Broken down per service, data usage led the income boost at P55.3 billion, 28% higher than the P43.1 billion registered in 2017. This accounts for 51% of the gross mobile service revenues.

Voice and text messaging suffered a slowdown, posting P30.3 billion (down 6.1%) and P21.3 billion (down 7.7%) respectively.

As of December 2018, Globe’s mobile subscriber base totaled 74.1 million.

Globe also reported growth in its home broadband services, taking in P18.5 billion, 18.6% higher compared to 2017.

Total broadband consumers grew 21% to 1.6 million nationwide. 

The company’s capital expenditure (capex) stood at P43.3 billion, 1.9% higher than 2017’s P42.5 billion. 

Globe said it spent 77% of its capex for robust data traffic growth and to support its increasing customer base.

The telecommunications giant is expected to spend even more in 2019, allotting some P63 billion.

“We will continue to build our network capacities to improve the internet experience as we reinvest our gains back to our network, which is now close to 33% of our revenues, to be able to deliver a differentiated level of customer service,” Globe president and chief executive officer Ernest Cu said. – Rappler.com